The grass in the field next to the train station is a bit patchy, which was why it got water-logged during the recent monsoon rains. As soon as the sun came out and the mud dried a bit, the works department labourers came and planted more grass in the bald areas, and used some stones and rocks to level up water-logged bits.
And that was when I realised that one of the stones wasn't just a stone. It was a headstone. For (as far as I can make out) Lea Caron Langdon who died in May 1961, aged 7 months.
There's got to be a Singaporean epithet in this. Such as one of those homilies that the labour movement keeps espousing about reinventing oneself, relearning a new skill set so as to find re-employment, etc. Guess finding new work in a new sector doesn't just apply to laid off workers but also to headstones of exhumed graves.
RIP, Baby Langdon.
4 comments:
Wait ... are you telling me that they re-cycled a headstone from someone's grave? And used it as filler? That's pretty ... tasteless. Or are you saying that the land used to be an ex-cemetery and this is a legacy that wasn't cleared away? Or is it a memorial that got overgrown?
Hi. You could have started something here. I see other papers doing an investigation, carefully measured, of course. Personally I think it's nice a gravestone has surfaced (from landfill material, presumably) to be in a place where people walk every day. (There were some pre-war ones in the old SU Bukit Timah campus. I loved them.) But yours, 1961, hmmm... could have living parents. In other countries this could lead to whole governments resigning.
Catswhiskers: No, I don't think the field was a former cemetary. I think the gravestone came from landfill material.
Anonymous: I recognise the font on the stone, it's the same as my granddad's stone at the old Chua Chu Kang Christian Cemetary. That was exhumed years ago. Actually, even now, if you bury somebody, the grave is exhumed in 15 years or something like that.
Yes, the baby could have living parents. But given the Anglo surname, I think they were probably a British family who were no longer here when the grave was exhumed. I would actually like to trace them, but no idea how.
Hi. It's me ES. Posted the comment too fast, without putting that in.
Great find, if sad.
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